


everything that you have undone

by gealbhan



Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Character, Gen, Mute Flower Kid, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Recovery, Therapy, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-27 21:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20414746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: The man formerly known as Dr. Habit goes to therapy, makes amends, gets a few hobbies, and plants a garden. Not necessarily in that order.





	everything that you have undone

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of habit feelings and wanted to project a bit!! warning for past child abuse, suicide ideation, some discussion of other mental health issues (including dissociation), and references to... pretty much everything in canon (including but not limited to tooth theft and other violence/body horror). also, spoilers for the good ending and everything up to that point, natch.
> 
> also! this is probably not a super accurate chronicle of being mentally ill (or, well, anything) in the early 90s, but let me live. also i doubt y'all are here for deep historical (are the 90s technically historical???) accuracy anyway.
> 
> title is from "beat the love" by autoheart (i think both it and "joseph" by the same group are pretty good habit songs. and also pretty good songs in general). enjoy!

Boris is sitting in a simplistic room with pale blue walls. The blinds are drawn, making the room even cooler than the air conditioning already makes it, which is a soothing contrast to the clingy humidity outside. It also makes Boris less distracted than he’d have been otherwise; they’re on the second story of this building, and while this area isn’t very busy, he’s sure his attention would jump to people in the streets below and wildlife on the surrounding roofs.

Still, even with the lack of distractions, he isn’t looking at the woman sitting in an armchair opposite him. His hands are folded in his lap as he sits bolt upright on a soft gray sofa. He’s facing her, but his eyes are on the desk behind her. The two are silent as they watch—or pretend to watch—one another.

Above them, the clock ticks. Boris’ gaze flickers to it. He’s not yet been here even fifteen minutes. His session is scheduled for the next hour.

When he’d first walked in, he’d been smiling with the characteristic abundance of teeth. Happiness radiating off of him. Casual threats hidden by a high, joking tone with a more subdued accent than his real one.

The… therapist, he brings himself to thinking despite his reluctance to accept the word, hadn’t been impressed. She’d asked him to be serious and to talk to the real Boris Habit, so Boris had fallen silent, smile slipping into a frown. And he had wondered (and is still wondering): Who _is_ the real Boris Habit, anyway?

The boy who only wanted the world to be happy and had gotten punished for it, for his misshapen ideals? The not-quite-a-boy-but-not-a-grown-man-either who still wanted everyone to smile but was on the railroad track leading to madness? The man—if one could call him that, too warped with power (or his true lack thereof) to even be considered human—he’d been not months ago, ripping teeth from people’s mouths and pumping their systems full of laughing gas? The man he’d become when a simple florist had held out one of his beloved lilies and agreed to make the world smile for them both?

Maybe he’s all of those things curled up into one. Maybe he’s something entirely different. He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know who he is without the Habitat, without his smile.

Across from him, the therapist is silent. Boris glances back to the space above her head to make it seem like she’s making eye contact. She doesn’t seem to be looking right at him anymore, but there’s still a prickling sensation on his skin—the feeling of being watched. He’d know that feeling like the back of his mouth.

Boris takes a deep breath. Uses the steady pattern he taught himself in college. Aside from the ominous ticking of the clock, it’s the only sound in the room for a moment, soon replaced with the ticking of his own mind. Where to start, where to start? His palms sweat with indecisiveness, all the things he could say in this instant.

Good stories always start at their proper beginnings, he decides, and he says in a quiet but serious voice—

“I wanted to be a florist.”

The therapist lifts her head. Whatever she’d been expecting, it probably hadn’t been that.

Boris links his clammy hands together and pulls them apart again with a quiet wet sound. “I wanted to be a florist,” he repeats, more confident this time. “I never wanted to be a doctor.”

“So you’re a doctor?” The therapist’s eyes come to life. She flips open a notepad and writes something down.

Boris winces at the notion, thoughts about what she could write about him already crawling in his mind. “A dentist. Yes. Or—or I was.”

“Would you prefer I address you as Dr. Habit?”

Nausea turns him even greener than he already is. Unable to speak, throat dry and mouth refusing to open, he shakes his head.

“Boris it is,” says the therapist, taking another note.

“Thank you,” mutters Boris.

“Of course. This is about your comfort and safety, so I’ll be sure to go along with what’s best for you.” Boris glances back at the clock but looks back in time to process her saying, “Why did you want to become a florist?”

“I wanted to make people happy. To make them smile.” A smile of his own crosses his face—small but genuine. His mouth is firmly shut, though, and if it were to open in more of a grin he’d cover it with a hand. He doesn’t know what to expect from this woman yet. “My whole life, I saw people being unhappy, starting with my family.” He tenses up the way he does anytime this subject pops up, but he forces himself to relax and move on. “But eventually, I noticed that more people than not weren’t happy. And flowers made _me_ happy, so I thought I could bring joy to other people with them, too.”

“It sounds like you were very passionate about that.” Boris nods. “So why did you become a dentist instead?”

“My parents—” His stomach churns again. This time, the wave of nausea is so strong that he covers his mouth and digs the nails of his other hand into the couch. The solid weight beneath him grounds him. “Can we discuss something else?” he says, sharper than he intends.

The therapist blinks. “Okay,” she says, gentler than the snap deserves. “Why don’t you tell me about your favorite flower, Boris?”

This is better. This is familiar and comfortable, even with the unpleasant ground it could dig up. This is something he likes talking about.

Boris lowers his hands from his mouth and folds his hands in his lap once more. There, they tap against each other with dull excitement, not too upbeat in case things turn out to be too good to be true. He stops looking at the clock. Still doesn’t look the therapist in the eyes, but that will have to be a mutual understanding.

“The erythronium flower,” he says. “Otherwise known as a tooth lily. There aren’t many people that have heard of it—as far as I know, only I know how it’s grown. Or, well. It used to only be me.”

“How is it grown?”

For a split second, images pass through his mind: A shadow looming in the doorway, too-perfect teeth contorted in what seemed like the only grin Boris had ever seen him wear. A flowerpot in pieces, petals and dirt strewn on the ground. A single bloodied tooth sitting among the broken flower. A copper taste in his mouth and a metallic scent in the air, things that would become familiar.

Boris loosens his grip on one hand and tightens his grip on the other until it hurts. “Like most plants, you have to plant the seed somewhere where it will get lots of sunlight,” he says. “Once it grows, it forms the shape of a pair of lips. If you give it a kiss, then it will open its mouth in a sweet little smile, and then you can share a drink with it. Teeth will form then, so you must brush, brush, brush—and then a small pure lily will appear! A lot of steps, but in the end, it’s worth it.”

“What a curious flower,” says the therapist with a smile.

“It’s very remarkable,” Boris agrees, breathing again.

*

Shortly thereafter, Boris meets up with Flower Kid.

They’ve been exchanging emails and having coffee or food together on a regular basis ever since the Habitat was cleared out. Every time, Boris ends up expressing his gratitude in all the ways he knows possible—including paying for anything Flower Kid wants to buy. He’s a little concerned about their caffeine intake stunting their growth, but they’ve assured him they’re already pretty much done growing.

He’s also picked up learning ASL again—having started and then quit back in college—to better communicate with them. Emailing is easy enough, and so is only asking yes or no questions. But in person, when the conversation gets a little more complex, his unpracticed understanding requires them to fingerspell or resort to getting out a notebook and writing more often than he’d like. So he’s hoping to become fluent in it this time around. He already knows English and Russian—how hard could a third language be? (Hard, but easier as he gets the hang of it.)

“_It’s good to see you,”_ Flower Kid signs over their iced tea.

Boris smiles into his hot cocoa. “You too, kid. How have you been?”

“_Good! Lots of deliveries. Lots of emails.”_

“Oh, my! What a hard worker.”

Flower Kid grins and nods. _“It’s been really—”_ They sign something Boris doesn’t recognize, so he tilts his head in confusion. They notice and spell out, _“B-U-S-Y.”_

Boris goes, “Oh!” and runs the unfamiliar sign over in his mind. He’ll ask them to show it to him again if he doesn’t run across it in his studies, but for now, he’ll go off the memory. “Sorry to hear that.”

They shake their head. _“I like it. I’m not bored, at least.”_

“Well, that’s good. Me, I haven’t been busy enough.”

“_Do you want to be busy?”_ Flower Kid looks curiously at him.

“I’m not sure. I’m—working on some things. I’m seeing a therapist now.” He doesn’t elaborate beyond that, though he relishes in the delighted look Flower Kid gives him. He takes a sip of cocoa. Though it’s warm out outside, the added warmth is pleasant rather than stifling. “How has everyone been?”

Flower Kid hesitates before they start signing again. _“Good, mostly.”_

“Mostly?”

“_They’re working on stuff too.”_

“That’s good to hear,” says Boris, sagging with obvious relief. He opens his mouth to ask something else, then shuts it again.

Flower Kid gives him a dead-eyed stare. _“Go on. Ask about Kamal.”_

“That would be favoritism!” Boris complains. “If you want to tell me how he’s doing, I won’t object, but I won’t specifically ask about him.” He sniffs. He still has to have some dignity, especially around this upstart. “I care equally about all of the former Habiticians.”

Rolling their eyes, Flower Kid nods. _“He’s fine. Has a new job.”_

“Oh, good for him!”

“_Do you want a new job?”_

It’s a different topic, but somehow a worse one. And makes Boris almost choke on his cocoa. “Pulling no punches, huh? I mean, eventually. I have to earn money somehow.” He hides a pained burst of laughter in his mug, which he takes a glum sip from. “It’s nice to hear about the H—about your friends.”

“_It’s nice to talk about them.”_

“I’m sure,” says Boris, hit with wistfulness. Or perhaps déjà vu. He glances over to notice a bouquet hanging from the backpack slung over the back of Flower Kid’s seat. “Say, Flower Kid, what are deliveries like?”

Their hands start moving at a pace almost too fast for him to follow. _“Cool! Fun! Amazing! Other adjectives! It’s so satisfying to see people’s faces when you give them flowers. It makes them so happy. Unless they’re for a funeral. But we don’t get a lot of those requests.”_

Boris smiles. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”

For a moment, he basks in how normal everything is. How normal Flower Kid and their strange, strange (for more than one reason) friendship with him are. How normal this day is—two friends sitting together outside an ordinary coffee shop. How normal _he_ would seem to any outsider, minus the hot cocoa in summer; he’s even gotten a couple of pleasant smiles from passersby.

Then he sits back, sipping his cocoa. “Would you mind telling me about your favorite flower delivery this week?”

Flower Kid nods eagerly and launches into a story.

*

The second session goes smoother, mostly due to the fact that Boris talks from the beginning and continues to do so for the full hour. For now, his appointments are every week, but the therapist has told him that they could get more or less frequent in some time depending on how she feels he’s doing. This is fine with him. There’s nothing else he really has to do with his spare time anymore.

“So far, Boris,” the therapist says toward the forty-minute mark, “you’re expressed behaviors and thoughts that, in my opinion, coincide with anxiety and depression at the least.” He shifts and nods. “Are there any other possible diagnoses you’d like to talk about?”

“I got tested for autism several years ago.” Boris says this in a small voice, though he’s not ashamed—he just hasn’t brought it up to anyone except the psychologist who diagnosed him, someone he’d known from college. “But I don’t want this to be about getting diagnoses. If I change my mind, I will let you know.”

“That’s all right. Labels can help sometimes, but putting a name to something isn’t always the best decision. Have you ever considered medication?”

He’s shaking his head before he even realizes it. “Not right now. Possibly in the future, but—” He curls his hand into a fist and digs his nails into his palm until crescent-shaped marks have formed when he unravels his hand. “Right now, I—I don’t want to have easy access to pills.”

Something in the therapist’s face clears. Her pen hovers over her paper. “Do you have plans?”

“No. No no no. I don’t—I don’t know that I would actually do anything, I just. Have thoughts sometimes.”

“All right. If you feel those getting worse, please talk to me. You can call anytime.” She nods to the phone on her desk, then clears her throat. “Medication isn’t for everyone, so that’s fine. But let me ask you something else, then—what do you want out of therapy, Boris?”

The answer comes like second nature: “To be happy. To be a better person. To be… better in general.”

“Those are some good goals. Fairly long-term, so we should discuss some shorter-term goals in the meantime, but I’m glad you’ve come to me with them.”

“Me too.”

They smile at each other for a moment. Then Boris’ therapist—which, he’ll later realize, he begins thinking of her as in this moment—flips through her notes before setting the pad aside. Despite Boris’ suspicion of said notepad, this doesn’t instill the utmost confidence.

“I know you were a dentist, but what do you do now, Boris?”

“Er—” Simple and reasonable as the question is, it makes him flinch. “Not much. I’m—um—between jobs?” He’s heard that euphemism before, he’s sure.

“And you wouldn’t like to go back to being a dentist around here?”

A chill runs up Boris’ spine. “No, no,” he says, curling into himself a little. “Absolutely not. I’m done with _that_.” He spits the word out like a loosened tooth into a cup. Or onto the ground. “I had my medical license revoked, anyway, so I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

After everything, he wants to say to hell with all other doctors, too, but that seems like a bad idea—and anyway, he’s seeing one right this second. Though he’s not looking forward to having to find a primary care doctor. He doesn’t think, among other things, his self-administration of testosterone nor the reason behind that will go over well.

Luckily, his therapist doesn’t ask about why his license was revoked, maybe seeing something in his eyes. “Do you have any idea of what you want to do now?”

“I think I’d like to finally become a florist.” His voice is faint, shaky. “Until I work up the courage for that, though, no.”

“So you don’t have any real interests or aims at the moment?”

“Well—” Boris wouldn’t have put it that way, but there are a lot of things he wouldn’t phrase the way his therapist does. “Aside from an interest in flowers, no.”

“Here’s my advice for you, then, Boris, and your homework until next time—”

“…Homework?? I’m older than you! :-S”

“Your _assignment_ until next time: Get a hobby. A couple, even—as many as you can reasonably balance. Maybe something will stick.”

*

On the way back from that appointment, Boris stops by the library and the local craft store. He checks out a pile of books on different topics, as many as his library card will allow, and buys a single ball of yarn and some needles.

It’s not teeth-related. It involves hands-on work, and quite a lot of it at that. As such, it could distract from the boredom and self-destructive urges.

Not long after, he gets a cat. Having another living thing in his home, something he has to care for, is all he can think of to help him get out of bed on mornings it seems impossible—and even with Flower Kid and his therapist around, he’s lonely. When he sees an older rescue cat in a cage in the local shelter, he asks to hold her. The second she’s hoisted into his arms and looks up at him, eyes soft and nose twitching, Boris falls in love.

She’s a Somali cat with fluffy fawn fur, eyes that are starting to cloud over, and legs that crackle when she stands up. Apparently she’s prone to gingivitis and tooth decay, as well as other common health problems in cats, but Boris zones out after hearing about the diseases he understands. He takes to spoiling her the day after he’s allowed to take her home.

Cat care and knitting do not quite mix. Boris learns to keep his knitting supplies up on high, high shelves and keep his cat entertained with toys and towers and more or less all the pleasures his money can buy. He knits while she’s asleep in another room. Sometimes he’ll knit beside her; if she starts sniffing around his yarn, he only gives her a stern talking-to. Or as stern as he can handle.

“No!!” he yelps one night when she tackles a square of yarn he’s working on right out of his hands in a rare moment of spontaneous playfulness. He keeps his own voice even and clear but not aggressive. He only knows how to do this one way, so—“DonOt do that :-( Just lay down, O-K?”

The cat stares at him, then does the feline equivalent of a shrug and plops down.

“Goode kitty :-)”

He’s sewed before, but not much as of late, so some basic concepts of knitting are familiar in a vague way. It’s still complicated, and he gets frustrated when he can’t get the hang of a stitch or doesn’t move his hands the right way and pokes himself with the (thankfully too dull to hurt more than a brief sting) needles.

He takes a break when that happens. Puts caps on his needles and sets the unfinished project up high, making sure his cat knows she shouldn’t try to get to it. (She’s a very smart cat.) And he keeps at it once he’s feeling better. It’s fun and even relaxing when he starts getting the hang of it.

The first thing he finishes, a small cushion for his couch, is… not great. It’s wonky, and the tassels from the leftover scraps of yarn are too clunky, but—

But he made it. It’s a functional pillow, if misshapen and a garish color he wishes hadn’t been the only one he’d bought, and he made it.

He’d made something—and not a gas-spewing machine shaped like a pair of lips or paper robots that address him as their father to hammer in that he wouldn’t be like his own. This is the first time in Boris’ life he can recall feeling this proud.

He sets his pillow on the couch. It makes him smile when he walks past. His cat seems to understand his love for his creation and doesn’t bat at it as much as she does intact balls of yarn—or she’s just too distracted to notice its presence in the first place.

Next time, Boris decides, he’ll make a scarf.

And, because why not, he also starts learning to cook with a beginner’s cookbook from the library. He already has an in-depth understanding about what’s good for one’s mouth, and it’s not like Jimothan the bartender will be cooking his meals anymore.

He’s also not that good at this at first. He still isn’t that good by the time his next appointment rolls around, and he admits his failures to his therapist, who encourages him to keep trying.

“That’s all we can really do,” she says. “Keep trying. Some might say there’s no such thing as trying, only doing or not doing, but I think it’s good to have some middle ground.”

So Boris keeps trying, and he does it with a smile.

*

“—and you know what, everyone should have access to doctors and medical treatment! I remember people crying in my offices about not having the money to be able to have certain procedures done—is it not a basic human right to be healthy? Is that not your so-called ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’?!”

“Boris, as much as I agree,” says his therapist, rubbing the bridge of her nose, “it’s been twenty minutes and you haven’t even told me how you’re doing. Why don’t we start there.”

He deflates. “Right, right.” He can’t even remember how he’d gotten on the topic. One minute he’d been listening to her perfectly normal greeting, the next he’d been on a rant about… he doesn’t remember, only knows that it’d morphed into healthcare as he kept talking. “Sorry, I—I—I think I was disconnected from my body for, well, twenty minutes there.”

“Did you fully dissociate?”

“I don’t think so?” Boris considers this, tapping his nails on his thigh. They’ve discussed dissociation a fair amount. Apparently, not feeling any connection to one’s own body (which he’d thought was a dysphoria thing before starting transitioning and still having trouble connecting to himself in the mirror some days) or the world around oneself sometimes isn’t normal. “No. No, just. I don’t even know.”

“Very well. How are you today, then, Boris?”

“Okay. I’m not really sure about that, either.”

“That’s fine. How’s your cat?”

“Good!! The other night, I went into the kitchen because I couldn’t sleep and wanted some water, and she was just up on the counter slowly eating garbage. We’ve all been there.”

“Have we?”

“We-ell.” He presses his hands together. “Maybe not _all_.”

“You said you couldn’t sleep. Have you been having trouble sleeping more often than usual?”

“Not really. Though I guess it’s gotten a little worse the past week or two because I’ve been—” Boris winces and looks the other way “—having nightmares.”

His therapist is already flipping through her notepad. “What about?”

“The—the Habitat. The big event.”

“You haven’t told me much about your time running the Habitat,” she notes. “Only that you believe you hurt people, particularly during this big event. And that you’d like to make amends to those people, but you think it’s too soon. Would you care to elaborate?”

“I… don’t like talking about it. :-(”

“I still have no idea how you do that with your mouth,” says his therapist with painstaking patience, “but I don’t think now is the time.”

“Right. Sorry. I—I don’t want to talk about the specifics now, if that’s all right.”

“Sure. Would you mind telling me about the nightmares, though?”

“Mmm…” Boris tugs his knees up to his chest. Since he’s not the shortest person around, it takes some skillful maneuvering, but he pulls it off. “They’ve mostly been about the Habiticians. Not so much Flower Kid, anymore, but my assistant—ex-assistant—has been popping up a lot.”

“Tell me about them. Your ex-assistant, that is.”

“Oh, Kamal—he’s—I don’t know how or what he’s doing now, actually. I only hear a little bit about the Habiticians from Flower Kid, though they’ve managed to keep in contact with all of them somehow. But he was—nice. He always really wanted to help. Even when I—well.

“The things I did, the things I said to him specifically… it was bad enough that he quit and hid up on the rooftop until Flower Kid came along. I mean, he was always pretty nervous—” though he was one to talk “—but! Still! And the thing I made fun of him for was technically my fault in the first place. Definitely not something he could help.” The days when he thinks about The Toothbrush Incident are not great ones. “It was—oh my God,” he says, interrupting his own sentences because of some unfortunate realizations he’s having. “Oh my God, I was Martha. _Oh my God_?!?”

“Sorry? Who’s Martha?” says his understandably perplexed therapist.

“I made fun of him because of his teeth! Just like—like fucking Martha!” He covers his mouth. “Oopsie! Sorry for swearing. It won’t happen again.” It’s as much a promise to himself as it is to his therapist.

“I mean, I don’t mind—”

“So, when I was a kid, there was this girl I knew named Martha. And she made fun of me all the time. Because of my teeth.” He opens wide. “And!! One time I took everyone in the Habitat’s toothbrushes to—well, it doesn’t matter! But I took them, and so Kamal’s teeth started getting bad because that’s what happens when you don’t brush your teeth, trust me I used to be a dentist, and I mocked his terrible teeth, and he ran away to have a nervous breakdown on the terrace.”

His therapist blinks. “Boris—”

“Yes, it’s bad! Cruel and unusual! It’s awful! _I’m_ awful!” Though he’s tempted to burst into tears, and somehow at the same time a laugh is threatening to bubble up, he swallows down the lump in his throat. “Before that, he was one of the closest things I’d had to a real friend. And I want to find him, and apologize for—for all of that. But he could never forgive me now. No way.” He presses his knees tighter against his torso and begins to rock. Sways as his breathing speeds up, as his heartbeat kicks up to a nerve-wracking pace.

He trembles, expecting to be told to stop, to be forced to stop when he _can’t_, but all his therapist says is, “Have you told him any of this?”

That—the calm, almost kind reaction to something that’s inappropriate, bad behavior, another word that he really doesn’t like—is almost enough to snap Boris out of it right then and there. He gulps down a deep breath but still can’t bring himself to speak. He keeps rocking, a little more confident now.

“Boris?”

“…No.”

“Have you tried?”

“Not—not yet.”

His therapist is silent for a moment, tapping her pen against her chin. “Is there a way you could?”

“I know his email address, but he might have changed it by now.” He receives a slight look of disappointment and cringes. “That is not the proper way to apologize, is it?”

“I would say it feels impersonal and rude at best. For anyone, but from what you said, he was one of the people you were closest with, so him in particular.”

“Yes. I think we were? Almost friends? And I think I—” He bites his lip, refusing to give a name to the feeling of dozens of insects stirring around in his guts. He’s not sure if it deserves a name or if it’s a physical manifestation of general anxiety. “Anyway. It wouldn’t be impossible to find him. Flower Kid knows where he lives. And—” He trails off, rubbing his warm face.

“Go on.”

“They told me that, even after everything, he—he still believed I had a soft spot deep down. That I could be saved.” Despite himself, Boris smiles. It drops in an instant. “I could never forgive myself for the things I said and did, but… I hope _he_ does. Even though I don’t really deserve it.”

“What are some ways you could let him know you feel that way?”

“I—I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well, this ex-assistant seems like a wonderful place to start making amends,” his therapist says, tilting her head. She glances at the clock. Last session, Boris had asked her about that, wondering if it meant she was looking forward to no longer having to see him, but she’d informed him that she was only trying to see if she had time for the topics she wanted to cover. She must decide she does, because then she sits forward and says, “So let’s brainstorm.”

*

He’s setting a box oh-so-gently down on a doormat when a familiar voice speaks up from behind: “Dr. Habit?”

Boris leaps back to his feet and hits his head on the ceiling. This building was not made for tall people. Biting back a yelp, he rubs his head and turns to face an equally startled Kamal, who looks—

Fine. Good, even, or at least better than he had the last time Boris had seen him. He looks like he’s been getting more sleep, and his teeth are bright and clean, though now forming a surprised grimace instead of a full smile. He still has small bags under his eyes and an oily quality to his skin, but those things aren’t really flaws. They aren’t as far as Boris is concerned, anyway—he always has dark circles and still gets acne too often for an ostensibly middle-aged person (which he blames on how late he’d started T).

More than anything else, Kamal looks comfortable. Not just his clothes, either—though the (presumably ironic) Hawaiian-print shirt looks comfy enough, his posture is slack and face more relaxed than ever.

He looks… happy. Or on the road to there. Then again, aren’t they all?

“Sorry, I was—” Boris hides the package behind his back, though he thinks the bouquet is still somewhat visible “—just leaving.”

Kamal tilts his head. “What’ve you got there?”

“Nothing!” His reply comes too quickly and shrilly, he can tell from the unimpressed look he receives. Boris sighs and extracts the box from behind his back. “I am… trying to make amends as best I can,” he says, keeping his tone as serious as he can. He steps across the short distance and sets the cardboard box in Kamal’s hands. “So I had a gift for you. Flower Kid helped me with the bouquet—and, um, finding out where you lived.”

“God,” Kamal says quietly before adjusting his grip on the box. He rattles it a little, maybe trying to figure out what’s inside. “Well, if I hadn’t been home, one of my neighbors probably would’ve stolen it. The flowers, at least. They’re—really pretty.” His own voice is neutral, open, but with a nervous edge to it.

“Stolen it??”

Kamal huffs—not an outright laugh, but _something_??? “You’ve never lived in an apartment before, have you?”

“Is—” Boris stops himself in his tracks, because he doesn’t think he has the right to say _is that normal?_ about anything anymore. Instead, he frowns and asks, “Are you happy?” He means to add _here_ or _living here_ or something, but he thinks they’d both know what he’d really be asking.

“I’m trying to be,” says Kamal after a moment. He shuffles his feet, eyeing the bouquet. Under the bright hall lighting, Boris can make out a significant amount of sweat on his face despite the cool demeanor. “Are you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Yeah,” says Kamal. His eyes dart around, and his jaw works for a moment. Then he nods toward his apartment door. “You want to come in?”

“Ah—I don’t think so, not today.” Boris looks away from Kamal’s face. It’s not that he doesn’t want to watch it fall—it’s that he doesn’t think it will. Thinks the opposite will happen—that Kamal will crumple with relief. He doesn’t know if he can see that. “Maybe another time? I’ll—I’ll email you.”

It’s a weak offering, a withering olive branch. But Kamal smiles a little. He nods before moving past, arm brushing Boris just enough to make that feeling stir in Boris’ stomach again.

“See you around, Doc.”

*

“My parents weren’t the greatest,” Boris admits. For the past ten minutes, they’d been discussing Boris’ cat, so it’s something of a nonsequitur.

“Oh?”

Every time Boris’ childhood has come up, especially his parents, he’s shied away and tried to change the subject (and not in a subtle fashion, either), so he can’t blame her for her also less-than-subtle interest. Still, he’d like as little interruptions as possible, and he tells her so.

She sits back. “Understandable. Please, Boris, by all means.” She sweeps a hand out.

The room grows very, very small, though not to the point of being suffocating yet. Now that he’s started this conversation, Boris wants to change the topic lightning-quick again. Talk about his cat some more, maybe. Or teeth. He’d spent the majority of his life fixated on them, after all, and teeth talk tends to weird people out enough that they’ll scramble to talk about _anything_ else.

He takes a deep breath and begins to tell his story in as flat but effective a tone as he can manage. If he wants to talk about this, he’ll have to detach as much as possible.

“Right, so, my parents. They—they were the reason I became a dentist instead of a florist. They—mostly my dad—didn’t like me being interested in flowers. It wasn’t respectable.” He says this with an air of casual derision. “So they wanted me to be a doctor instead and forced me into medical school. I at least got to choose what kind of doctor I got to be, but—” A small laugh slips out. “It wasn’t really a choice.

“I wanted to be a florist because I wanted to make people happy,” he reiterates, and his therapist nods. Good, she remembers. “I thought that if I could fix people’s smiles, that would work just as well.

“But… it didn’t. I wasn’t happy, and neither was anyone I treated. They were so sad—and ungrateful, too! They had those perfect full sets of teeth to smile with and did nothing with them.” He crosses his arms, then realizes he’s channeling his manic, envy-ruled med school self and adds, “But that’s not the point. The point is, this all started with my parents.

“They were never happy. I barely remember either of them ever smiling. They weren’t happy with each other—and they especially weren’t happy with me. Ever.” He rubs his arms. Where his sleeves have ridden up, he notices goosebumps lining his skin. “My mom was mean to me most of the time. There were moments where she’d treat me well, but mostly she just called me names and, if I said anything back, told me not to backtalk. Or that she was only teasing.

“But my dad was worse.” Shivers rack his body. “He—he was—this one time,” Boris says, thinking an example will tell it better than a general oversight of all the violence and turmoil, “when I was ten, he found me kissing my lily. And—and he didn’t like it.” Boris stays in the present, but just barely, clinging to his body by a thread. “My smile got hurt, and so did my lily,” he recites. He remembers writing that diary entry, remembers shaking and trying not to vomit but crying more for his lily than he ever did for himself.

His therapist covers her mouth. “Boris—”

“But I probably deserved it,” he says with a feeble laugh. He tenses at the thought, a rationalization that had followed him up through high school but hasn’t resurfaced in some time. “I was a difficult kid. Weird, too. And maybe it wasn’t as bad as I think it was now,” he adds. “My lily—eventually, my lily forgave my dad for what happened when I was ten—” and he realizes as soon as he says so how ridiculous it seems “—so why shouldn’t I? I haven’t spoken to either of them in years, not since I graduated medical school, but—”

“That’s not true,” cuts in his therapist, the cold rage in her voice taking him by surprise. “A weird child, maybe, but still, you were a _child_. Their child, and thus their responsibility.”

“I—but—” Boris freezes. He runs that through his mind, and suddenly, that same sort of anger takes him over, too. “I was a kid,” he realizes. “I was—I was just helping my flower grow.”

“I need you to know that you didn’t deserve any of that, Boris. I’m so sorry.” She holds a hand over her mouth for another moment or so before he nods hesitantly—then, satisfied, she lowers it and adopts a calmer voice. “Did you ever report your parents to any authorities?”

“Who would have listened?” he says quietly, shrugging. “They would have assumed I had a problem with English—I was only completely fluent in Russian then—or they would have read my other diary entries or talked to my parents and thought I was making things up. _I_ thought I made most of it up.”

“I’ll listen. It might be too little too late, but maybe it can help.”

Now that he thinks about it, Boris does feel lighter. Shaky, sure, and now that he thinks he’s fully in control of himself rather than a passenger in his own body, he can feel how hard his heart is beating and how dry his mouth is and how heavy his eyelids are. But his mind feels clear in a way it hasn’t in some time.

“Maybe,” he agrees. “But not today. No more today.”

“Of course. How about we just go over some coping mechanisms for flashbacks and anything else trauma-related you’ve experienced?”

*

“What in the literal actual fuck,” says Kamal as he holds up what would appear to be a yarn skeleton of a snake without a head or tail, “is this supposed to be?”

“It’s a scarf! Or, well. It was going to be.” Boris is not sure why Kamal had insisted on not opening his present—minus the flowers, which are sitting in a jar on the kitchen table—until he was around. “I started knitting. That was the second thing I finished.”

“_Knitting_? You?” The _seriously_ isn’t spoken but for sure implied.

“My therapist told me to get some hobbies. I’ve been cooking, too.”

“Oh my God.” Kamal’s eyebrows press together. “Can you make anything decent yet? I’ve just been living off of instant food over here.”

Tempted as he is to point out how bad the probable current staples of Kamal’s diet are for his teeth, Boris refrains. “Lots of soup,” he decides. “I’ll bring you some shchi sometime. Flower Kid said it was good when they were over the other day.”

“Huh. What was the first thing you finished knitting?”

“A pillow!” Boris clasps his hands together with a bright smile. “It’s also kind of bad, though probably not as bad as that—” he gestures to the feeble facsimile of a scarf “—but I like it. My cat does too. She likes the rest of my yarn, but she steers clear of the pillow.”

Kamal’s eyes go wide. “Hold on,” he says, straightening up and blinking. “You have a cat?”

“Yes!! The name her last owners gave her was Ginger, so I kept that. Change is hard for cats,” he says solemnly. “And some people. She’s very old and smile-y, though a brat sometimes, and I love her very much.”

Kamal smiles. “What is she like?”

Boris doesn’t have any pictures on hand, so he describes both her looks and personality. He also draws a little picture of her on the envelope of the card—more like a letter (or small novel)—he’d left in the box for Kamal. It’s a colorless caricature, but it captures her essence.

“You will have to meet her someday! :-)”

“God, you’re still doing The Thing.” Kamal rubs his eyes in horror. “But yeah, I’d like that. My landlord doesn’t like pets, even visitors, so I’d have to come over to your place.”

“Oh—” Boris tries to pretend like he isn’t sweating. Then he remembers Kamal sweats roughly twenty hours of the day, so it might go unnoticed. “That would be nice!! I can show you the pillow, too.”

They lapse into an awkward silence as Kamal, nodding, looks between the scarf, the now-expired box of chocolate, the already-wilting flowers in the kitchen, and the letter he’d said he would read when Boris wasn’t in the room. (Boris hadn’t suggested this but was oh-so-grateful.)

“Hey, you know what this reminds me of?”

Boris pauses. “What’s that?”

“That one Valentine’s Day you gave me all those chocolates and cards.”

“Aha. Ahahaha.” Kill him now. Except not really, because he doesn’t want to die (and oh, it’s unnerving that that’s a scarier thought than the opposite), but in spirit.

Kamal gives a little snort and shakes his head. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for that stuff,” he says, frowning. “But was sweet. But also really embarrassing. Mostly because I think you were just doing it to—I don’t know, make fun of me or get me to keep my job in some weird way. I mean, there’s no way you could’ve actually liked me, right? This horrible-toothed goblin?”

Never mind, he does actually want to die now.

“Your teeth are fine now,” Boris assures, trying not to address anything else outright. “They always were, really, I was just—” He glances away. “Compromised? In a bad place?”

“Unhinged,” Kamal suggests. “Literally.”

“Uh-huh.”

“This is sweet, too.” Kamal gestures to the so-called scarf and even the chocolates. “Still kinda embarrassing, but less creepy? I mean, I know you’re genuinely doing this now.”

Boris rubs his eyes. “Yes and I _do_ actually like you,” he says under his breath.

“What was that?” Boris freezes. “Sorry, Dr. Habit, you know I don’t hear too well sometimes—”

“Oh, nothing important! Just, ah. Reminiscing! And you can call me ‘Boris’ by now, silly! :-)”

“…You’re, uh, really smiley tonight.”

“Force of habit,” he says, then pauses with as devious a grin as he can muster. “Force of _Habit_.” Kamal groans, but he’s fighting a smile of his own and it gets him to drop the topic and move on to asking about any other hobbies, so Boris is satisfied for now.

Oh, well. Maybe someday he can say it for real.

He has time, after all.

*

“How do you feel today, Boris?”

He’s used to hearing this question, but this is the first time he’s smiled upon hearing it. “Happy,” he says, and he means it.

Once she gets over her open shock, his therapist returns his smile. “That’s wonderful, Boris,” she says, and he can tell she means it as well. “Is there anything in particular that made you happy?”

“Not that I know of. I woke up feeling this way.”

“Did you sleep well?”

Boris thinks about it. No nightmares. No sudden awakenings in the middle of the night. No tossing and turning for thirty minutes or getting up to pace when it stretched into forty. Though that could have been because his cat hopped into the bed before he could stop her, and he was petrified of accidentally rolling over and crushing her, so he’d tried to stay as still as he could until he’d fallen asleep.

“I think so,” he says—he feels well-rested enough, though not too energized, so he doesn’t think it’s a mania-induced smokescreen. “I slept in a little, but since I didn’t have anything to do but see you this afternoon, that was fine.”

“Don’t you usually wake up at around four or five, anyway? I can’t imagine what ‘sleeping in’ is for you, then.”

True, it hadn’t been that late when he’d gotten up, made sure his cat wasn’t dead (she wasn’t, but she was sleeping like it even by the time he left), and fed himself and her. He laughs and rubs the side of his neck.

“Have you been in touch with your friend recently? Flower Kid, their name is?”

“Oh, that’s not their name, just a cute little nickname,” he says with a flippant smile to make up for the fact that he’s just realized he doesn’t know their real name and doesn’t know how to ask now. He coughs. He can deal with this crisis later. “No, we haven’t really gotten to talk in a bit because they’re busy, but we’re getting something to eat tomorrow.”

His therapist nods. She doesn’t open her notepad much these days, only when she wants to fact-check and he’s either nonverbal or doesn’t remember, but she still taps the cover where it’s sitting in her lap. “And your other friend? Kamal, if I remember correctly?”

It’s sad that Boris can only consider himself to have two real friends, but it’s even sadder that that’s also probably the most friends he’s had in his entire life. “I’ve been talking to him more,” he says. “I knit him a scarf the other day. A better one than the first one I gave him.”

“I’m sure he appreciated that.”

“Yes! He said he could legally burn the other one now. I told him he could have done that a long time ago, but he kind of went quiet and said he hadn’t wanted to hurt my feelings.”

His therapist chuckles. “It sounds like he looks out for your feelings. That’s a good quality in anyone.”

“Yes, he’s—well. You know.”

“And how do you feel about, well, how you feel? I’ve gotten the impression that you haven’t been truly happy in a long time.”

Boris narrows his eyes. She does this sometimes—lures him into a false sense of security with innocuous pleasantries, then asks another question that cuts him to the core. But he sighs, letting his smile fall, and considers it.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s nice, being happy, but—it’s also difficult, because I know it won’t last forever. Or even maybe longer than today. I just want to exist in this—this bubble of joy for the rest of my life, now that I’ve finally found it. But I can’t, can I?”

“That wouldn’t be living.” Her voice isn’t unkind, but it is firm. “Anyone who honestly thinks they’re happy all the time is likely repressing most of their actual emotions—as is anyone who only feels anything else. Like sadness.” She gives Boris a sharp look.

“I wasn’t sad! I had the frownies.” He immediately tries to look for a better word. “I was—I was—”

“Depressed. Empty, numb. Angry. Generally unhappy,” she rattles off, looking at the ceiling rather than trying for eye contact. “You may not have been sad, Boris, but you weren’t in a good place.”

“Well, of course I wasn’t. I have clinical depression.”

“Boris.”

He grimaces. “I know, I know. It’s just—so hard to avoid getting out of that rut sometimes,” he says. “And I got used to feeling bad over time, so feeling anything else would be too drastic a change for me to even try to make.”

“Do you think that’s why different moods hit you so hard? Because they’re such big changes?”

“I hadn’t thought about it until now,” says Boris, which is a recurring refrain of his at this point, “but—maybe?”

His therapist hums. “Unfortunately, there’s no easy fix to this sort of thing. Aside from medication, but as I’ve told you, that’s not for everyone, and the side effects may be too detrimental for it to be worth it.”

Boris nods. He’s still not too fond of the idea of medication—his opinion had soured further after reading the fine-print side effects on a bottle of anti-anxiety meds he once found on the bathroom counter in Kamal’s apartment. He doesn’t want to think about what the side effects would be for other kinds of medication.

“There’s nothing you really can do to prevent bad days or bad moods in general, especially when you’re mentally ill.” Like_ therapist_, that’s a term Boris hadn’t liked acknowledging at first. “So just stay happy as long as you can. And if you end up feeling bad, even this evening, it’s not the end of the world; it’s just human nature. And if you don’t feel good forever, you won’t feel bad forever either. Okay?”

Slowly, Boris nods again. His shoulders slump with the gray area between relief and defeat.

“Not everything is black and white,” he says with practiced ease.

His therapist smiles. “Exactly. So for now, Boris, just stay positive. Bask in being happy.”

“I will try,” he says, and again, he means it. He fidgets with the collar of his jacket for a moment before adding, eager to move onto another topic and distract himself from the inevitability of other emotions, “Do you want to hear about the new knitting project I’m working on?”

*

Here is the real meaning of healing: You aren’t perfect and won’t ever be, but you know and accept that. You acknowledge your mistakes (and the bad things you’ve done that weren’t mistakes) and make what amends you can—and you’ll continue to do so as you continue making mistakes and doing bad things, like all people. You also know that you’ll never be happy all the time; that getting better is a learning process with bumps in the road, and sometimes things get worse before they get better. But you _are_ getting better, you remind yourself every time you pick yourself back up. You cannot see the finish line from here, but that’s a good thing. In this case, finishing means giving up.

Here is how Boris Habit begins to heal:

He plants a garden, the kind he’s always wanted to grow. He’s not ready to become a florist yet, though Flower Kid has offered to go into business with him someday, so for now, the flowers are only for him.

He does not think about missing teeth and broken shards of a flowerpot stained with blood. He only thinks about the beaming sun above and the dirt on his hands. And if his thoughts do veer in an unsavory direction, as thoughts—especially his thoughts—are wont to do, he looks around, grounds himself in the moment. Counts the flowers. Points out what he can smell and see and hear. Reminds himself of the man he is becoming (for we are always becoming, always moving and growing, so we can never truly say who we are or who we’ll be in the end), that he’ll never have to live that life again.

And, though the flowers aren’t _for_ anyone else, he finds himself thinking about others as he buries seed after seed in the dirt.

For Flower Kid, he grows yellow roses. For Dallas, many-colored asters. For Tiff, sweet peas. For Trencil, chrysanthemums. For Nat, anemones. For Putunia, snapdragons (despite her namesake). For Gillis, gladioli. For Tim Tam, begonias. For Trevor, monkshood. For Mirphy, hollyhocks. For Lulia, tiger lilies. For Jerafina, azaleas. For Borbra, birds of paradise. For Gerry, buttercups. For Ronbo, wishbone flowers. For Questionette, irises. For Marv, alliums. For Jimothan, sunflowers. For Parsley, crocuses. For Randy, daffodils. For Millie, petunias. For Wallus, peonies. For Kamal, deep red carnations (red roses, he’d decided, were far too cliche).

For everyone, he grows purple hyacinths. These he does grow with the intention to give out. While not everyone from the Habitat may be familiar with the meanings—sorrow and the more specific and more apt “I’m sorry, please forgive me”—he intends to send personalized notes along with them. For now, he watches as they grow, beautiful and proud despite their intrinsic sadness.

And, last but no longer least, for himself, Boris grows a whole field of tooth lilies, all smiling for him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! if you have time to spare, comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> i was going to leave flower notes, but then i realized that would be 23 lines and decided against it. so, uh, if you want to hear about why i chose a specific flower for a certain habitician (since a lot of flowers have... MANY meanings), just ask!
> 
> (also, the scene where habit spends a third of a therapy session talking about healthcare? a real experience i had, except i didn't end up talking about anything really productive and in fact went on to complain about capitalism in general. it really is like that sometimes.)
> 
> [tumblr](http://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com) | [twitter](http://twitter.com/withlittlequill)


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